Objectives
When I tell colleagues I’m going to be using Jim Crow-era racist objects to teach towards social justice at a predominately black school, I get sideways looks. I understand their confusion. Using blatantly anti-black images as tools for teaching social justice to black adolescents may seem like a strange and unorthodox approach. How can objects designed specifically to induce pain and self-hatred, reduce humanity, and subjugate an entire race of people be used for learning, let alone healing? What is my role as a white teacher in this process and how do I navigate this content in an anti-racist, color-conscious manner?
David Pilgrim, public speaker and one of the United States’ leading experts on race relations, is a self-proclaimed “garbage man.” He began collecting racist objects in his early adolescence. He recalls his first purchase as a young black teenager - a ceramic mammy salt shaker that he destroyed promptly after purchasing. Afterwards, he wrestled with the idea of buying this object just to break it – not in a political act of rebellion, but simply out of hatred for the thing.
The desire to amass and study these objects, their origin, and how they fit in to today’s society prompted his founding of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. Whether or not these objects should be saved is a point of contention amongst scholars – should they be discarded to the trash heap where they belong? Or should they be reclaimed and repurposed, forcing us to ask questions, to help us better understand historical and present-day racism, and to move us forward? Henry Louis Gates, teacher, historian and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, grapples with these questions. In the foreword to David Pilgrim’s book, he explains his understanding of those who believe that presenting these hateful and violent images to students “could lead to internalization of the very racist messages [they are] trying to eradicate.”2 While he acknowledges this possibility, he suggests that these objects, if studied through specific lenses, can be made to function as validation of African Americans’ experience of racism, and as a call to action, providing African Americans with new insight and understanding of the history of anti-blackness in America and ways to combat it. Bryan Stevenson, Harvard University-trained public defense lawyer and best-selling author said, “when somebody affirms that [racism] exists, it can be really liberating. It can be really affirming to know that you are not crazy.”3
On my first trip to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., imbued with sorrow, frustration, and hope, I stumbled upon one artifact in particular which stopped me in my tracks. On view in the museum was a slave master’s bullwhip. Of course this is not an unlikely artifact to be present in the catalog of such a museum, but upon closer inspection, a small bronze plaque read, “On Loan from Oprah Winfrey.”
Oprah Winfrey is one of the world’s wealthiest black women. She is a philanthropist and mogul. I imagine you would be hard-pressed to find someone in America who doesn’t know her name as well as a handful of facts about her. One of Oprah’s first important art purchases was in the 1980s of Harry Herman Roseland’s 1906 painting “To the Highest Bidder” which depicts a female slave with her young daughter on an auction block. This work of art is conspicuously displayed in her home – it engages you as soon as you enter.4 Kathy Y. Wilson, a black writer and Jim Crow remnant collector in Cincinnati, Ohio, lives amidst her collection of lawn jockeys and mammies. As a white woman, I have had to consider what would inspire African Americans to not only purchase objects like these, but also put them in places of prominence.
There aren’t any racial groups that have escaped being caricatured in the United States. But none have been caricatured more often or in as many ways as Black Americans. Blacks have been depicted as naturally subservient, criminal, opportunistic, feeble-minded, animalistic, and hypersexual. Attitudes like these have been represented on many different everyday objects: cookie jars, penny banks, paper ephemera, advertisements and children’s games. These objects were made in America by white people, for white people. The mere existence of these objects not only supported racist stereotypes, but also perpetuated them, physically inserting them into the homes of many white Americans. Racist stereotypes were then used as justification for the inferiority and maltreatment of blacks. For example, citing feeble-mindedness as a common trait of African Americans made it easy for whites to rationalize their feelings of superiority. These stereotypes have been widespread – they remain in place today, although they’re manifested slightly differently. These objects, in addition to being used as a jumping off point for talking about race and racism, will also become the subject of student ekphrasis.
So why teach the history of racist objects in America using the arts? African Americans have used visual art, poems, jazz, spirituals, and rap as forms of resistance to these racist impositions. Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, refers to these forms of resistance as “lines of flight.” Lines of flight empower marginalized groups to assign meaning to their existence “over and against imposed and narrow definitions of being based on current conditions” -- in essence, taking on the role of activists to reclaim their identities and cultural representation.5
What can we learn from this activism? How can we use our understanding of the history of racism and how folks rally against it to become architects of the future? My students will learn some ways in which the arts, visual and verbal in this case, can heal and transform them as well as their communities. I want to focus on implementing steps for building safe spaces for students to take on weighty topics like race, approaches for discussing race effectively with students once the safe community has been established, and ways to empower students to take what they’ve learned and transmogrify it artistically.
Ultimately, students will synthesize all of this to write ekphrastic poems and make visual art to understand how black artists and poets are using these themes in their work. Jim Crow era racist objects will be the subjects of student ekphrasis. Then, including text from poems they’ve read and written, students will create a layered self-portrait with renditions of how they see themselves and how they believe society sees them.
Anti-Racist Teaching
This unit seeks to uncover and name difficult truths about anti-blackness in America, today and throughout our history, while examining the effects of white supremacy and how we might shift into a way of thinking about conflict as productive.6 The idea of this unit is that objects of racial intolerance can be used to teach about race and racism and that those conversations will yield difficult but honest conversations and less racism.7
It cannot be overstated that work within this unit will require students of all races as well as myself to consciously move beyond surface-level conversations about race. If done with care and intention, a certain level of discomfort will likely accompany this pursuit. To teach this content and to teach for social justice in general, I must get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
A core concept of this unit is for students to understand the systemic nature of racism. Systemic racism, also called institutional racism, hides in plain sight and is woven throughout our lives and society as a whole. By definition, institutional racism describes racism, whether conscious or unconscious, that is expressed in the practice of social and political institutions. It is a structural distribution of resources, power, and opportunity for the benefit of white people and the exclusion of people of color. The consequences of institutional racism are manifest everywhere. The reproduction and reinforcement of institutional racism through destructive policies and laws forms a long history that has shaped our attitudes about others and ourselves. It’s important to recognize the difference between this level of racism and the racial biases of your elderly grandfather, for example. Both, of course, are harmful, but systemic racism does more widespread harm than individuals with racist ideologies. In fact, the systemic nature of racism in the United States creates an incubator for individuals with racist beliefs. Perhaps the biggest danger of institutional racism is that it is almost totally elided by deeply-rooted metanarratives such as the “bootstraps” ideology (“if you work hard, you will ascend the socioeconomic ladder,” and the corollary, “If you didn’t succeed, you didn’t work hard enough”.
Embedded in every realm of our society is evidence of pervasive anti-blackness. From issues of representation in academia to police brutality to housing discrimination, America is obsessed with perpetuating the lie that all have equal opportunities. Black men who commit the same crimes as white men with similar backgrounds receive longer sentences.8 One-third of African American men in their 20s are under criminal justice supervision.9 African American unemployment is higher than all other demographics and 83% higher than white unemployment.10 Public schools remain separate and unequal despite mythology leading us to believe otherwise. Black students are expelled at three times the rate of white students. Schools serving mostly white student populations are more likely to have more experienced teachers. Black students are under-represented in gifted-and-talented programs.11 All of these things and many others disproportionately and negatively affect black people. To ignore hard truths prevents us from holding ourselves accountable and taking action.
We have all heard people say they don’t “see color” in conversations about race. What they are saying is that because race is so insignificant to them, there is no possibility that they have racist proclivities. They are free from the burden of racism and consider themselves as “one of the good ones”. Many people see racism as a dichotomy – either you are guilty or you are innocent. This “us” and “them” attitude blinds us to covert racism that occurs in the in-between and actively prevents progress – how can you fix what you don’t perceive to be broken? White teachers bring this with them into the classroom. Tunnel vision, unconscious/inherent bias, and fear of appearing racist handicap our work.
On a macro-level, a “colorblind” ideology asserts that racism is over. This philosophy is often based on the notion that The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s led to racial equality and an often-cited piece of evidence to support this is the election of America’s first black president in 2008. How then do we account for the vitriolic racist responses to and in the wake of Obama’s presidency? Or the ongoing trend of police murdering unarmed black men? If we are indeed living in a post-racial era, how do we account for the resurgence of a white supremacist presence in mainstream society, or the increase of murders committed by white supremacists?12
Compared to the blatant and overt racism of Jim Crow, “colorblindness” can seem like “racism lite”. During Jim Crow, lynchings, racist laws, anti-black signage in storefronts, and beliefs about blacks inferiority were the norm. If white folks say that race is unimportant to them today, why is that a problem? Color-blind racism suggests any adversity an individual faces is result of a deficit within that person – not the color of their skin. It becomes a way of simultaneously “othering” and minimizing the experiences of people of color. Colorblindness also assists whites in projecting racism onto “bad racists” like neo-Nazis and other self-identified white supremacists, the way of thinking being “I don’t ‘see color,’ therefore I’m not like those extreme individuals and cannot be racist” 13
Society as a whole is not the only space where “colorblindness” causes harm. In the classroom, a “colorblind” philosophy of teaching can wreak havoc, particularly in circumstances involving a white teacher of students of color. By ignoring the race of our students of color, we are effectively ignoring their identities, lived experiences, culture, and reality. This creates a detrimental rift in relationships in the classroom, which are essential to effective teaching.14
Self-Reflection
Before tackling the painful racial history of the United States in the classroom, as white teachers we must self-reflect. Questions I want to ask myself include: How has the color of my skin put me in positions of privilege throughout my personal and professional life? How have my experiences been informed by the way I am perceived outwardly? In what ways has my privilege clouded my perception of others’ experiences? Regardless of intention, have my words or actions belittled or ridden roughshod over the thoughts and feelings of people of color? Are there occasions when I absolve myself of racism as one of the “good” white people?
If I am honest with myself, I realize that I have benefited tremendously from a society that values whiteness over blackness. Undoubtedly, the first order of business is to accept this. Without acknowledging the ugliness, how can we build the world we want? The question all of this data begs of us is how and where do we start? Do we lament the death of the myths we’ve been told since birth - about America the Great, the land of opportunity, about freedom and justice for all? What actions can we begin to take to right these wrongs? Whose work is it to do? We must ask of our students and ourselves: what events throughout history led us here and why? What connections can we make amongst ourselves? What commonalities can we see? What might come of valuing our differences as much as our commonalities? Armed with information, self-awareness, and ownership of the problems we face, we can make change, but only if we engage with our own learning. We can build a new world – but we have to transform the one we’ve got first.
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